


Accidental Subversive

by Rosehip



Series: Strange Luck [11]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Chantry critical, Friendship, Gen, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-04 05:05:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14585586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosehip/pseuds/Rosehip
Summary: Silvana Amell averted disaster by going to the Circle in Ferelden, but she wasn't entirely prepared for how the Chant is taught to mages. She's never been one to break the rules, but it's a whole new life, isn't it?





	Accidental Subversive

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains a brief mention of an attempt at potentially sexual violence towards, and then blackmail of a minor. None of it comes to pass.

It was the last thing Silvana ever expected for herself. When presented with the choice between rebelling against her family and rebelling against the Chantry, she chose the smaller rebellion.

 

When she went to the Chantry “to pray for resolve”, she only brought what she could get away with. She layered her clothes so that she really had three shirts, two sets of underwear, and two pairs of pants, covered over by her sturdiest, warmest cloak. She had a money pouch only slightly heavier than she'd usually carry. She had a pocket comb, a belt knife, and a tin of hard sorghum candy. Into a leather handbag, she tossed her diary, writing kit, and her favorite copy of the Chant that was her aunt's before she'd run off with Malcolm Hawke. The prayer beads made of blue and green glass that helped soothe her anxiety went around her neck. Anything more than that would have aroused too much suspicion.

 

Silvana didn't even know for sure what she would do or what would happen, but she wanted to be ready for whatever it was. Elthina herself ordered Silvana taken out of the country, to Ferelden, a political backwater. It took her far away from everyone she knew, but kept her out of the hands of her family's political enemies.

 

That had been all she wanted. Throwing herself on the Revered Mother's mercy seemed the only way out. The night her old life ended replayed in her mind constantly. A ball- too many bodies, too much heat, too much dancing, too many insufferable dance partners. She had needed air, escaped to the garden. _He_ had silently followed her, had caught her alone, had grabbed her. Had frozen solid.

 

Had recovered. Still wanted her body or her money. _No one need ever find out about this if...._

 

And her mama's unexpected reaction. _“I'm sorry. You have to do it, darling. You can't go to the Gallows, you'll be dead within the week if we don't do exactly as we're told.”_

 

And so, Silvana found herself a prisoner on a ship and then in a wagon bound for a distant tower, and it had been the best possible outcome. She tried to remember she chose this, as the templars watched everything she did. Nobody on the journey to the circle that came of this ever questioned her Chant, though. Of course they didn't, really. The Revered Mother spread the word that she was a person of great faith, so that she carried her own made sense. The templars never examined it, though they examined everything else. Silvana could have hidden a dagger or an envelope of poison in the back cover and nobody ever could have found it.

 

When she arrived at Kinloch hold at long last, those in charge of admitting her allowed Silvana to keep her shoes, her underthings, the empty candy tin, her comb, and her beads. Some sort of voiceless warning in the back of her head caused her to tie her coins in a handkerchief tight enough not to jingle and hide them in her bosom, so she had those. The trunk her mother had sent, full of hastily thrown together clothes and jewels, had been taken and sold, except for one pair of small garnet earrings.

 

Enchanter Wynne had seen to that. “Apprentices shouldn't have too many of such things. It makes everyone jealous. That said, we shouldn't let your holes close up when you might need them when you're older.”

 

Silvana didn't think she valued things overly much, but the sudden loss caused her startling pain. Everything suited to a life outside- gone, just like that. Through it all, however, nobody cared about or even did more than glance at her Chant. She clutched it to her chest like a cuddle toy.

 

And that was how Silvana, without having any idea at the time of the enormity of what she'd done, smuggled a copy of the complete Chant into the place it was most forbidden.

 

She didn't realize the gravity until her second Chantry service- mandatory, of course. Mother Cait went on at length about the corruption of magic and its damaging influence upon those who wielded it. She continued about the need for their vigilance against sinful desires to cause harm or exert power over others. Silvana had never felt less powerful. Macsen, the bounciest child she'd ever met, sat still as a rock. A few apprentices shed tears openly. Most simply looked bored.

 

 _That last is probably the worst yet,_ Silvana thought. _How many times has everyone heard this, in order to feel boredom at being condemned?_

 

That's when it dawned on her. Belief enough in this version of events necessitated that nobody here had ever heard the discordant verses. _Of course they haven't,_ Silvana mused. Few people read them at all, unless they took a serious interest in religious study. A person could search for months before finding a copy for sale. Furthermore, the Chantry wouldn't want mages in the Circle questioning their treatment. That went double for elves.

 

She didn't want to think about what would happen if the templars discovered it. Silvana should turn it in, for safety. _Except fuck that. Oh, dear. In services, even. I'll recite more verses later to make up for it._

 

Silvana was willing to live in the tower. She was not willing to believe herself evil, nor would she believe they'd never find a better way. Maybe someday, she could be a part of that. To do so, she had to remember the truth of Andraste and magic.

 

She looked to either side, at daydreaming Jowan and furious but miserable Macsen.

 

_And others needed to learn that truth._

 

_*_

 

Macsen stared straight at Revered Mother Cait as she delivered the morning damnation. It was a testament to everyone's collective willpower that she hadn't caught fire... recently.

 

The circle went through priests at a good pace, but Mother Cait made it her sworn duty to remain. She took obvious pride in the difficulty of her job and constantly told the templars how much she pitied her poor, Maker-spurned charges.

 

 _Wouldn't do to let us forget how evil we all are,_ thought Macsen. They had mandatory services three times a week. Renata I's opinions on mages came up at least once each week.

 

Macsen wanted to go back in time and destroy every book she ever wrote. “Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him,” said the Chant. This sounded fine to Macsen, really. Magic could be of so much use! It should be a gift, like his family had said. The Chant said “magic”, not “mages” so it was complete cat poo that mages had to serve man.

 

 _Anyway, they probably meant humans when they said “man”. Ruling over elves was right and proper if you asked any priest._ Macsen tried to keep the resentment off his face.

 

Silvana sat beside him. She kept glancing over with a puzzled frown, like she didn't understand what she saw. After the service when they headed to class, she said “You looked very intense in there.”

 

“You heard it. How else should I look?” She was making him grumpy. He reminded himself that she'd given Mamae's necklace back without Trading for it, and hadn't held his past against him, so far. Still,

 

She pressed her lips together. “I admit that it was, well, bracing. I've never been on this end of that speech, after all, but I knew it was coming.”

 

“And it'll keep coming. Can't let us forget the Maker hates our faces.”

 

Silvana whirled around and grabbed his shoulders. “The Maker does no such thing. People will think whatever they want, but we mustn't put our words in the Maker's voice.”

 

He gasped and wiggled out of her grip. “I don't try to! I don't want to have anything to do with the Maker or Andraste. I wouldn't if they didn't make me.” Indeed, he asked for permission to skip the services time and again, but it never helped.

 

Her eyes widened and she frowned. “You wouldn't?”

 

“Why should I? They don't want anything to do with _me_.”

 

“At the risk of breaking my own words into pieces, I can promise you that isn't so. Will you let me lend you my copy of the Chant?”

 

“Why? We have plenty.”

 

“Because you're my friend and I want to share something I love with you.”

 

 _Oh, that is fighting dirty._ “Fine, I'll read it. Though I still think I've had enough of this nonsense for one day.”

 

“Tomorrow, then.” She looked smug.

 

“Darn your logic.” He'd let her win this one. It was rare someone actively tried to be his friend. If trying to be one back meant doing a little reading? He'd survive it. _Please be as good as I think you are, and not another stupid shem._

 

 

The next day, as promised, Macsen found Silvana's battered, heavy, red and gilt chant under his pillow in the evening. He flipped it open. The book fell naturally to several passages that veered towards the hopeful; Andraste's strange birth, songs about resting in warm, sunny meadows. All of that figured, really.

 

Then he noticed a string sticking out between some pages later on. _The book of Shartan. I've never heard of this. What kind of Chant is this?_ Macsen read.

 

He read of the struggle of elven slaves to free themselves from Tevinter. He read of their allegiance to Andraste and her cause. He read about elven warriors and mages, and about her general Shartan standing up to a corrupt state- and winning. He read about Andraste bestowing Halamshiral to the elves so that they could finally have a home again.

 

Macsen recognised the name. Halamshiral, for all that it bore an elvhen name still, belonged to the Orlesian Empire.

 

Andraste apparently stood by the elves. She hated abuses of power, but not necessarily magic. She had worked with mages and elves, both. The humans who served her today didn't want anyone to know about it. She freed the slaves, but her words were used to make new ones. _Vhenpapae, wherever you are, did you know you and the Keeper were selling me into slavery over a lie?_

 

Macsen closed the book. No doubt it held other secrets, but that was big enough for now. He needed to think.

 

Humans twisted the actions of their own gods! They kept the truth to themselves just to keep slaves, while condemning Tevinter for keeping different slaves. That everyone should be free had been the entire point of everything Andraste did.

 

He hopped down and set the book on Silvana's bed, right next to the treatise on Spirit that she took notes from. “Thanks for the loan,” he said. “Can I finish it another time?”

 

She looked up at him with a furrowed brow. “Of course. It didn't make you feel any better?”

 

 _To know that absolutely nothing is sacred to humans? How can it?_ “Not really. I'll need to do some thinking.”

 

“I'm sorry. I just wanted you to know about-” her eyes darted out into the hallway where the templars always stood. “-Andraste's love for her friends.”

 

“But- her love has been hidden.” Macsen closed his eyes and clenched his fists. How could he explain this? It was so huge.

 

“You mean that you're upset you never heard it put this way until now?”

 

“I guess I mean that. Pieces of truth are lies. And when- when people l-lie to you you have to think about why. And... and I didn't know anyone would go this far.” The tears came, then. He'd hear about it for a week.

 

“Oh, sweetie, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to...” she pulled his hands away from covering his face and pulled him down beside her. “I didn't mean it like that.”

 

“Th-they do.”

 

“Yes, I guess they do.”

 

She hugged him stiffly, like she wasn't sure how to hug, but thought it was important to try. Maybe that was why he let her.

 

_*_

 

That hadn't gone as planned. Silvana meant to offer comfort. The discordant verses offered a place in the world to mages and elves. _A place that has arguably been stolen,_ Silvana grumped. Of course Macsen had reasoned out that Andraste's gift of the Dales had been stolen, and not simply reverted back to humans after the extinction of the Dalish elves, as Silvana had been taught. He knew now that Andraste had never meant for elf mage children to be taken by humans. It must have increased the pain of the fact that humans had done that _for Andraste._

 

_I revealed that to Macsen so that he'd know that the Maker didn't hate him, which is important, but was this the right thing? I don't know!_

 

“I'm sorry,” she said into his hair.

 

“You're not the one who should feel sorry,” he said when he could. His voice came out muffled into her chest.

 

“I might not be the only one who most needs to apologize, but I certainly didn't mean to make you feel worse about things.”

 

“Thanks. I know.”

 

“Want to make Mother Cait apologize? Or at least leave?” she whispered by his ear.

 

“I didn't expect that from you.”

 

“Me, either.”

 

“All right, I'm in. How?”

 

“You're probably asking the wrong person, but I'll think about it.”

 

*

 

Cait didn't know what to make of this past week. The first and second levels of the Tower were always cold, but this was _ridiculous_. Her shoes did nothing to keep the chill of the floor away. She even slipped on a patch of ice _on the rug_ on her way to the chapel one morning.

 

Tea would help. She fetched a mug of hot tea from the magically warmed pots at the end of the hall. She cradled it in her chilly fingers with gratitude for the Maker's small blessings. She fetched her book of sermons and her essays by Renata I and carried it all back to the chapel, dodging ice the whole way. The Circle had been carved out of a living cave, so the whole thing was stone and subject to odd temperature variations, but _really!_ She should ask the formari to set some warming runes around, at least.

 

Not that Cait could get _good_ help. Her Renata I had been _dusty_ this morning. Dusting should have been taken care of by one of the apprentices who needed to learn their place. Perhaps that was it, the apprentice might have resented the tome. Nevertheless, they must learn that the views expressed in said book were right and proper. She would increase the teachings of Renata in her sermons, until the apprentices grew more comfortable with the glorious truth.

 

 _Drat it all, why are my hands itching?_ Cait gasped at the blisters forming between her fingers. _Wait, those are..._ Sure enough, the dust she had wiped off her book's cover wasn't dust at all, but rashvine powder. _Those little shits._ Cait breathed deeply, several times, well away from the dust. It was her duty to educate these forsaken children, and it seemed her task was greater than it appeared. She would persevere.

 

During that morning's speech, Cait cradled her mug of tea to warm her hands from time to time, even though it made her blisters itch. She felt every bit of draft twice as badly as usual, and it was maddening! Only, one time, when she took her mug in her hands, it scalded her. She yelped and dropped it, the pottery crashing to the floor to cast boiling liquid all around.

 

But it wasn't boiling. Perhaps it just felt so, in this chill. She scowled at the floor to see... an eerie purple light emanating from the base of the statue of Andraste?! That looked like the telltale residue of a strong hex. That would explain her ill luck and temperature susceptibility.

 

“Someone is using evil magics in this house of the Maker this very morning. I have my suspicions, but I ask that you confess.”

 

The sea of faces regarded her with far more interest than usual. Nobody moved.

 

Cait searched her memory. The strongest hexer among the apprentices was that elven maleficar's child. She stared him down and he blinked back at her, guileless.

 

“Do you have something to say, Surana?” She kept her voice gentle. “This does have your feel about it. And perhaps you know how rashvine powder found its way into my things, this morning?”

 

“Revered mother, if you ask Beatrice the Formari smith, she'll tell you that I was with her from before dawn to just before this service. You were already here when I arrived.”

 

He smirked a little. He must know something, Cait thought. “Very well, I will ask it, so if you are lying, you might reconsider. But there remains the matter of the hex light, that has to be you.”

 

The wretched little imp shrugged. “You can't cast a hex on an object like a statue. I don't know what's going on there.”

 

He did sound puzzled. He might simply by a better actor than she expected.

 

She sighed. “I don't actually want to give a sermon in the glow of an evil hex, however it came to be. You are all dismissed. I _will_ be discussing this bit of witchery with Irving, however. If anyone has anything to say before then, my office is open.

 

But by the end of her little speech, nobody remained but Keili, who had nothing to do with this, obviously.

 

*

 

“Can you keep freezing everything like this?” Macsen asked Silvana, with awe in his voice.

 

Silvana hushed him. It was all very well for everyone to know him for an unrepentant trickster, but the longer everyone stayed in the dark about the rest of this the better. She had given coppers to any other mages with cold affinity to keep the floor and walls a little... extra frosted, lately. Macsen didn't need to know the extent of it as he couldn't tell what he didn't know.

 

Irving had grilled him for over an hour about the rashvine powder, which hadn't been him, either. It had been Jowan, who somehow slid out of everyone's notice most of the time.

 

“So, on the other hand, what are your _theories_ about the mysterious spell cast in Chantry services this morning?” Silvana raised an eyebrow at Macsen.

 

“I honestly have no idea.” He threw his hands up, blue eyes wide. “You can't cast entropy magic on _stuff._ If _someone_ tried to cast a hex on someone and another person was standing close by, it could hit them instead if the caster wasn't careful. That doesn't explain statues. Statues aren't people. But whoever cast that hex had better not try that again anytime soon.

 

“I'm sure they'll think of something else,” she smiled. Revered Mother Cait would soon learn that she had not endeared herself to the apprentices. The more she harped on about Renata I's horrible interpretations of the severely abridged chant, the less comfortable she would be. At least until Silvana ran out of things to trade.

 

Silvana's stomach churned. _What in the world has come over me?_ It wasn't like her to take such risks. She always wanted to do as she should. This felt... uncomfortable. And yet, it felt necessary. Perhaps the Maker had seen fit to place her here for a reason. She'd be a good mage. She'd do everything asked of her, but if she saw other tasks that needed doing? Well, she'd do them. Her parents would confine her to her room forever if they knew even half of this; befriending peasants and elves, playing tricks on clergy, disobeying every rule, snubbing those of her own station... but she'd effectively been confined to her room indefinitely, regardless.

 

She didn't like disobeying, it frightened her. But she liked watching the people around her ground under heel and losing hope even less. She'd take care of them, in whatever ways she could. She could tell already that they would do the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as always go to everyone who took a look at this thing before I posted it, and especially for some extensive beta-notes from Starla-Nell and RayMurata.


End file.
